And damn, Scrion takes off running. It’s not quite as fast as before with its less coordinated, three-legged hop, but it’s still hauling ass. Not only that, it’s coming around again for another strike. For a moment, I’m impressed with the thing. It’s going to fight to the end. Then its arc becomes a circle. The dazed and wounded creature is playing ‘duck, duck, goose’ all by itself, sprinting around an imaginary ring.
Even Nemesis seems confused by this behavior. She stands still, watching. And then, as though she’s seen enough, she reaches down, catches Scrion by the protective plates of its back and lifts the pitiful thing into the air. Holding the smaller Kaiju aloft, she wraps her big hand around Scrion’s head and neck, and then squeezes. For a moment, there’s some resistance. Scrion is built similarly to Nemesis, and is no doubt powerful. But it’s no match for the original. Nemesis’s hand twitches and collapses inward, crushing Scrion’s head. A smear of brown and white fluid oozes out from between her fingers.
She relinquishes her grip, dropping Scrion’s body into the ocean. A wall of water rushes up and over the beaches, flooding the husks of empty homes.
And then—shit—she turns toward me.
And stares.
“Umm,” Woodstock says. He has us hovering a half mile away, which suddenly feels not nearly far enough. “So I’m officially starting to get freaked out by all the giant monsters looking at us the way Michael Jackson looked at kids.”
He’s right. Nemesis’s glare is decidedly unsettling. Unlike Scrion, who’s eyes—despite their focus on us—had beamed with mindless chaos, Nemesis’s eyes, which are brown and quite human looking, reveal something deeper.
Thought? Meaning? I have no idea, though part of me really wants to know.
Her furrowed eyebrows come up. The rage and tension gripping her body melts away. And suddenly, in my mind, she’s no longer Nemesis.
Woodstock sees it, too. “There she is,” he says, his voice something between awe and surprise. “Maigo.”
Knowing Woodstock has seen what I have felt all along sets my resolve, and when I hear the words, “Target locked! Clear to engage?” in my ears, I react quickly, toggling Devine to transmit openly. “Negative! Do not engage! I repeat, do not engage! Scrion is down. Maigo is not the target!”
As those few words replay in my mind, I inwardly cringe, knowing that just one of them is going to land me in hot water. I called her ‘Maigo.’ And while Woodstock might agree with me now, the opinion of a sixty-two year old retired Marine Corp pilot re-hired for the FC-P against the advisement of my superiors, is probably not going to help my case.
“I repeat, Nemesis is not the target.” My order lacks its previous conviction, and I hope using her true designation will help people miss my foible, but I know it won’t. I’ve just put the express shit-train on full speed and sent it toward my doorstep.
The jets fly past overhead. There are nine of them now, converging from the airbases to the north and south. In another ten minutes, there would have been thirty. A line of ten Apache helicopters takes up position along the shore, three hundred feet up, boldly hovering close enough to unleash their payloads.
Nemesis pays them no attention.
“Take us closer,” I say.
Woodstock lowers his head at me to peer over his aviator glasses. “You’re shittin’ me, right?”
“I need to test a theory.”
“I can save you the trouble and just say you have the biggest balls in the world, how ’bout that?”
“Any sign of trouble, we can bug out, and I’ll give the order to fire.”
Woodstock twitches his mustache back and forth for a moment and then throttles us forward.
“Bring us up to eye level,” I say.
“Roger that, Cap’n Ahab.”
As we rise up, growing closer to Nemesis, her brown eyes track us, still oblivious to the helicopters and jets swirling around her like black flies in the summer.
“That’s as close as I get,” Woodstock says, when we’re a hundred feet away. Just out of arms reach. Unless she decides to step forward when she swats us down. They we’re just screwed. But I don’t think she’s going to do that.
Betty rises up until we’re at eye level. The chopper is about the size of Nemesis’s eye, but at a hundred feet away, her face is about the size of someone standing a few feet away. And there is no doubt she’s looking straight at me.
“I’ll be damned,” Woodstock says. He sees it, too.
Then I do something stupid. I reach out a hand and wave, saying, “I’m okay,” quickly adding, “We’re okay,” mostly so I don’t feel so weird.
And then, I’ll be damned, she turns away and starts trudging out to sea.
I go to toggle Devine and find the system still set to broadcast.
Damnit. I hate myself. Everyone heard our little Kodak moment.
“All units, stand down,” I say, trying to sound more authoritative than embarrassed. “Begin tracking protocols. Follow her for as long as you can.”
I switch off Devine and lean back, watching Nemesis retreat peacefully back into the depths, leaving a trail of Scrion’s brown blood in her wake.